I returned this week from an Art of Hosting Training, working with Chris Corrigan, Caitlin Frost, and Teresa Posakony. Bowen Island, just off the west coast of Vancouver, British Columbia, is suuuuch a lovely place to host. Rivendell, the retreat center holds a group well. It is quite cozy -- which usually makes for great community and learning.

While there, I hosted an Open Space session on Intuitive Knowing. I wanted to explore this as a tool for shifting paradigms. It fit well in the context

of this training, which began with a cafe on “Where do you feel stretched now?” It was affirmation together that the times are changing, and, yes, it is a time to not only pick up tools but to re-learn and un-learn learning itself.

It was great to see so many people interested. We each expressed a bit of why we were interested in intuitive knowing. This itself was quite helpful, some naming of desires. It included everything from seeking more efficient ways of being to working deliberately with dreams and visions. From the deep dives of trusting old wisdom and owning our roles as alchemists to the immediate beginning practices of strengthening intuition through journaling. A common thread for me was the desire to be better translators, better listeners, and better receivers through intuitive knowing.

Through sharing a few stories together, we began to listen in for a few principles and practices to strengthen intuitive knowing. Each of these feels like it can be a practice for living. Our full harvest sheet is here for perusing.

•Follow the impression, the ease.

•Own the calling (the times seem to keep speaking it to us) -- who do I think I am not to do it?

•Welcome the wholeness of the world (life and consciousness seen as one entity) that wants to be in partnership with us and speaks to us through intuitive ears. What if the things that grab out attention are gifts of communication from this wholeness of the world so that we can learn at new levels?

•Remember old ways. First respect your elders. Then become one. Be your 100 year-old self (thanks Amanda Fenton in particular for this), sometimes welcomed through initiation by elders or mentors.

My experience of learning in this group, in and of itself, was great. What it opened me too was even more beautiful, this topic and inquiry:

The world offers us symbols

so that we might project meaning upon them,

and in so doing,

come to understand more of our inner condition

that is in fact creating our outer reality.

This is a deep learning for me. It is something that has been distilling now for a number of years. So, thanks to all the good friends at Bowen Art of Hosting! This is one for some further reflection and writing over the next season or so.

Replies to This Conversation

I wasn't there, but I guess that when we allow things to emerge, there is no need for logic, no tough choices or decisionmaking, ... Only inner feeling, intuitive knowing, the knowledge to be right! - @cdn

Dear Tenneson, As always - I love your questions and particularly of this genre. While you were in Bowen I was near Sao Paulo Brazil with a lovely group of people - 39 of us altogether - in an Art of Hosting focused on the dance between the inner self and the outer self. For me to do an Art of Hosting training in a group that speaks a different verbal language than me was a good lesson in intuitive knowing - once I broke through my own fears about not being able to speak Portuguese. Intuitive knowing showed up in deep heart connection with people that required no conversation - only deep experience and welcoming from the place of knowing that creates connection beyond anything I've experienced before this (and that is saying a lot). I'm still sitting with the full experience to absorb it all. Sometimes intuitive knowing means I don't need to understand it all - just surrender into the flow. Thanks for this.